August Flashback

*This is a post from August 18th, the last day I had reliable internet access at home. Since then I’ve moved, started school, contracted the worst case of adult thrush the nurse at the walk-in clinic had ever seen, and danced through another wedding. I’m significantly less cheery at the moment. Word has it that my house will be back on-line tomorrow. More soon.

These August days are bittersweet. While I prefer July for beach-going (I got there once this year), August is better for everything else. Mornings tend to be bright and cool. Afternoons bring a surprising heat that is more bearable, less intense than that of July. Evenings warp time in such a way that, mid-stroll, you realize that it is nearly 9 o’clock and you haven’t started dinner.
This morning I’m at my computer, gulping coffee and allergy medicine in an attempt to get myself in working order. The siren call of my canoe distracts me from what needs to be done: packing and school work. In fact, I may soon leave my obligations for that same canoe, but we’ll talk about my lack self –control and focus some other day.
Back to August. For example, I packed up C and Sam-dog last night and drove out to the farm. For those of you who don’t know, ‘The Farm’ is the expanse of land I grew up on; the earth that holds my parent’s house, my grandparent’s house, one rock wall, a red barn, a frog pond, a gravel pit, and a ½ mile track formerly used to train horses on. Whenever C or I have a writing prompt about “home” or “your childhood” or “family” we are on fire. We can’t talk about it enough.
Anyway, we got out there, let the dog roam freely, ate our pizza and hung out on the porch. After supper C announced that he was going up to Gram’s (to read in the new, purple hammock chair suspended from a tree by their house), threw on his backpack, and rode his little bike up the dirt road. I ran up and down the driveway so my father could diagnose my stride, the reason for a recent injury, and decided to take a walk around the track with the dogs. We walked up past my grandparent’s house, past Colby hanging from a giant tree in the purple chair, past two tractors and my grandfather picking rocks in his newly furrowed fields.

As I made my way into the first turn, all I could think of was this seemed like a scene from a movie, I just couldn’t believe it was mine! The track was overgrown from many years without horses, and the dogs moved through the grass, only the bronze and black tail tips visible above the overgrowth. They dodged in and out of clearings in what must have been a game of doggie hide ‘n seek. I picked up my pace at the thought of snakes underfoot and gave up swatting the dragonflies whose peace we disrupted. I ran, the dogs played, the clouds allowed just enough sunlight to stream through. It was easily the most beautiful run of the year, and without ipod or timer, just what I needed.
And now, I am leaving my computer behind to see what kind of trouble I can stir up on a day like today.